New External Drive - Don’t Do What I Do!

11 Oct 2017 21:49:43

Rick Churchill

I’ve just bought a new 2 Tbyte external USB 3.0 hard disk onto which I transferred 170 Gbytes of video, 340 Gbytes of pictures and 88 Gbytes of music from other external drives there being not enough storage on my Macbook. Before I did this I was going to re-format the drive to an Apple format but the Seagate Ultra Slim drive had a programme on it which lead me to download a chunk of software called Paragon. Paragon is a driver allowing the Mac to write and read to an NTFS disc without formatting, hurrah!
No actually boo as Time Machine will not recognise the drive to include it in its backup routine. So after an evenings work loading and arranging the files how I wanted them I had to reformat the disc and start again. I wanted to use Ex-FAT so I could move my data between Mac and PC but this isn’t supported either so had to use Mac OS Extended (Journaled) in the end.
Luckily getting Lightroom to access the new location of pictures was a lot easier.

Re: New External Drive - Don’t Do What I Do!

12 Oct 2017 15:02:39

Mick Burrell

Because of it's complicated link system to show us old versions of files, Time Machine will only work on an HFS+ format. How soon it will be able to use that or APFS is anyone's guess ;-)

Re: New External Drive - Don’t Do What I Do!

14 Oct 2017 11:45:08

Tony Still

Another approach is to partition the external drive. You could use 1TB as HFS+ exclusively for Time Machine and format as you please the other 1TB.

I believe using a drive/partition exclusively for TM is considered best practice. A partition also allows some control over how much space TM uses before beginning to recycle storage by 'thinning' old backups.

But you've done it now...

Re: New External Drive - Don’t Do What I Do!

21 Oct 2017 12:15:02

Rick Churchill

Thanks Tony only just seen your reply.

No, I am offloading the files onto a external drive because I do not have enough on-board storage but this then gives me the opportunity to connect it to another/someone else’s machine with all my media files. This requires a compatible PC/Mac format.

I then need to back up these files in case the drive becomes faulty so having the media files and the back-up files on the same drive is not secure.

(At this point you usually send a reply showing that I have completely misunderstood your argument!)

Re: New External Drive - Don’t Do What I Do!

21 Oct 2017 19:03:35

Derek Wright

Data does not exist unless it exists in two or more locations. One of the locations must be in a different building to the primary data. Buildings get destroyed by fire (along with disk drives and computers)

Re: New External Drive - Don’t Do What I Do!

21 Oct 2017 23:49:59

Rick Churchill

More concerned about scum that break into houses and steal computers but leave back-up drives in fire-resistant safes. (Also people like me who could possibly drop said computer)

Re: New External Drive - Don’t Do What I Do!

22 Oct 2017 00:02:56

Mick Burrell

Rick, I trust your fire-resistant safe is designed for drives - one designed for paperwork will not protect your delicate platters if the worst happens. A document safe has to keep its internal temperature below 177℃ whereas one for data needs to stay below 52℃. (Only a nerd would know that ;-) )

Re: New External Drive - Don’t Do What I Do!

22 Oct 2017 10:52:19

Roy Rainford

Is storage in "The Cloud" worth considering?
http://uk.pcmag.com/storage-devices-reviews/3682/guide/the-best-cloud-storage-and-file-sharing-services-of-2017

Re: New External Drive - Don’t Do What I Do!

22 Oct 2017 15:45:18

Tony Still

Rick, no criticism of your logic. If the data is offloaded then you do indeed need another copy of it on another device (as Derek vividly illustrated). You could, though, use a Mac format and rely on temporary access to a loan Mac if the worst happened.

If you want direct access from a PC, there is a utility for Mac called Paragon that enables writing to NTFS. The interesting bit is that Seagate has a deal that provides a free version, the catch being that it only works on Seagate drives; you perhaps need to buy an extra drive anyway...

Paragon is here ($20) and Seagate download is here. I haven’t tried any of this: if you should try it, please tell us how you get on.

Re: New External Drive - Don’t Do What I Do!

22 Oct 2017 18:34:24

Rick Churchill

Tony see my original post. Drives formatted NTFS are not seen by Time Machine and cannot be backed-up.

Mick, thankyou I didn't know that but I suspect anyway that my fire resistant safe is not that good as a fire retardant and probably better to take others advice and store my drive of-site perhaps with my neighbour. To tell you the truth I often forget to put the drive in the safe but at least it's not laying around on the dining room table like the laptop!

Thanks for all your advice

Re: New External Drive - Don’t Do What I Do!

22 Oct 2017 20:55:40

Derek Wright

You might consider using WiFi to talk to the offsite drive so you do not have to disturb the neighbours when you want to hand over the drive at midnight. I have heard that using an ethernet cable strung between the two properties can be a bit dodgy if the two properties are on different electrical phases.

An alternative approach is to have two or more drives for back up and each night back up to a drive and pass it over to the neighbours for safe keeping.

Another of my maxims re drives is

Drives exist in one of two states:
Dead
or
About to die.

Re: New External Drive - Don’t Do What I Do!

23 Oct 2017 17:34:17

Tony Still

Rick - Apologies, it was too long ago that I read the first post!